


One More Sorry Soul

by The Curator of The Sands (GrimRevolution)



Series: Voltron Whump Week 2017 [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s01e05 Tears of the Balmera, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Pidge | Katie Holt-centric, Pidge!whump, Voltron Whump Week 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-16 21:19:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11837262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrimRevolution/pseuds/The%20Curator%20of%20The%20Sands
Summary: Some things don't leave you.And children are too good at being soldiers.





	One More Sorry Soul

The castle was operational even after Sendak and Haxus had done... whatever to it. Pidge didn't care. Lance was in the healing pod, the rest had gone off to sleep or eat or whatever and she was sitting in the dark, staring at her computer screen but not really reading anything. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, frozen in the motion of typing but never actually pressing anything. 

She kept seeing something move out of the corner of her eye and expected to see Rover there, hovering silently until they did their little chirruping sounds. But the little droid was gone and her room seemed quieter for it. Pidge ran her hand down her face and sighed softly before shutting her laptop and setting it off to the side. 

The room descended into darkness, leaving nothing but the dim cerulean lights and the blinking charge light of her laptop. 

Pidge closed her eyes.

 _A beep_.

_A crash._

_A scream_.

She was scrambling up to her feet, tripping over wires and spare parts as she shoved herself out of her room and into the dim hallway. And she kept running and she kept looking forward because there wasn't anything behind her,  _logicall_ _y,_  but she didn't want to take that chance. Turning a corner too fast, Pidge felt her shoulder slam into the side and it sent her on her hands and knees with a yelp and she sat there, panting, her heart pounding in her ears. 

 _There's nothing there_ , she told herself angrily.  _There's nothing there, there never_ ** _was._**  But that wasn't  _quite_ true.  There had been something chasing her through the Castle at one point. 

It wasn't there anymore, though, it wasn't there it was—

_A robot powering down._

_The smell of flesh burning._

It was dead.

Pidge pressed her hands over her ears and moaned low and deep in her throat. 

She was thinking again. She needed to stop. Just for once, stop thinking about  _everything_. 

They hadn't wanted her to know, either—the other Paladins. But it had been Coran who had kept her away and shooed her to go talk with Keith, Shiro, and Allura in the medical rooms. She hadn't really  _thought_  about it at the time, she was too worried about Lance and if the amount of time it had taken her to get the Galra out of the ship had caused even more problems.

Allura said he would be okay, said that he would come out as good as new.

Pidge swallowed and pushed herself back against the wall. 

 _Haxus_ , the alien had a name. He had a voice. He had  _spoken_  to her.

_Haxus_ _._

It hadn't mattered that he had been trying to kill her at the time, didn't matter that it was self-defense, in the end. She killed him. She watched him fall and felt more pain about a robot shutting down than she did about another— _technical_ —person. Her stomach felt heavy, her throat swollen, eyes itchy. Pidge took a deep, shuddering breath and rested her head back, against the wall, and stared at the ceiling. 

The floor was cold and it was seeping in through her socks and shorts but she couldn't be bothered to move. 

She closed her eyes and breathed it, only to see Haxus, his face twisted in horror as he fell back. The bright orb that gave the Castle energy flared and there was zapping, like a bug in a catcher but that—

Pidge's eyes snapped open. That hadn't been him, that had been something else, something that had come over a comm, distorted and followed by a choking, agonized scream. That zapping, that electrocution, that was something else,  _someone_  else.

It was—

It was—

Scrambling back up to her feet and having to catch herself on her hands, Pidge ran towards the bathroom and hoped she could make it before she emptied her stomach across the floor. One of the doors came up on her left—characterized by their half-circle almost dome like top and she crashed through the door. 

There was a soft of toilet but she didn't make it there and leaned over the sink instead, gripped the metal, and lurched over. Her stomach jerked and vomit burned her tongue and the back of her nose but once it began her stomach lurched again and again and  _again_. Her knees trembled and the skin across her spine and the back of her neck had tightened so much that it was almost painful to move. 

Pidge held onto the sink and threw up again and again until she gagged and nothing else came up from her mouth. Her grip was so tight that her knuckles were turning white and she moaned, low in her throat, and resisted the urge to let her forehead drop down. A rough cough shook up from her hips to her collarbones and she rode it out, almost gagging again before spitting what was in her mouth out into the sink and turned, with trembling hands, the water on. 

The sound was soothing. Rhythmic. She focused on it and counted the seconds between her breaths. 

"Pidge?" 

Jerking to the side, she blinked slowly, looking up at the towering form of Hunk. His eyes were wide, staring at the mess in the sink to her drawn and pale face, "hey," his voice was soft, "are you okay?"

The swallow she tried to complete stuck in her throat and she opened her mouth only to say nothing. Not even a lie. Instead, her lips wobbled and Hunk's eyes went wide. 

"No, no, don't cry,  _please don't cry_ ," Hunk raised his hands and they hovered between them even as he looked wildly around. "If you cry, I'll cry, and then we'll just be two crying messes and  _no, no, Pidge, it's okay._ "

She was crying and clapped her hands over her mouth as a broken sob ripped up through her chest. Tears streamed down her face and Pidge stared, helplessly, up at Hunk as her body shook and her throat let out a soft whimper. 

Hunk swooped forward and pulled her to him, too tall so he had to get down on one knee and pull her close. Clinging to his yellow shirt and green vest, Pidge buried her nose into his shoulder and felt the tears fall freely. She sobbed against him—her missing family and the events of the past days catching up to her all at once. 

Something inside her chest  _shattered_  and Pidge could do nothing but hold onto Hunk as he pulled her close. He was warm, biceps thicker than her torso and he was so much  _bigger_. Which meant he engulfed her, completely and absolutely. 

"Sorry," she choked out, "I'm sorry, I'm  _sorry_."

"Shhh," Hunk ran a hand through her hair and then held her closer and Pidge buried her face back into his shoulder. "It's okay, Pidge, just let it out, there you go."

His shirt was damp under her cheek and Pidge sobbed and gasped and cried until her body felt too exhausted to do any of that anymore and she just laid against him. Sniffling a couple of times, Pidge sighed and almost jumped when he brushed her hair back again. But Hunk didn't pull away and she didn't ask him to so they sat there in the bathroom.

"Sorry," she whispered, voice hoarse and she didn't even bother clearing it even though her nose was stuffy and her eyes burned. 

"Don’t worry," Hunk said, pulling back just enough so she could wipe at her eyes and nose. "Besides, you've seen me cry loads of times.

Pidge laughed and it was a wet, choked sound but he beamed at her anyway. She offered a trembling grin in response and he ruffled her hair.

"Come on," Hunk said, "I think we could both use a midnight snack."

She stuck close to his side, leaning into his warmth almost drowsily and, when they finally got to the kitchen, the conversation had turned to the Balmera and the people on it, how beautiful the crystals were and, how, in time, Hunk could see it be as beautiful as Coran remembered them to be. Pidge asked him questions about Shay and the people, about the tunnels under the surface and how her "enhancements" to the shuttle had worked for them.

Hunk kept talking when the questions tapered off though and, when he finished the pot of soup, Pidge's head was resting on her forearms, brown eyes closed as she slept. 

He didn't wake her. Instead, there were spare blankets in one of the storage closets and he wrapped one around her shoulders and let her sleep on. 

**Author's Note:**

> ??????? this was supposed to be more but i promised someone comfort and needed to write some good ol' Pidge and Hunk friendship


End file.
